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Contents
Abstracts
Life after hobbits: The New Zealand screen industry in 2006
Geoff Lealand
This article considers the state of the New Zealand TV and film industry, drawing upon the first comprehensive survey by Statistics New Zealand, and discussing a number of notable new productions. It also considers New Zealand film and television on Australian screens and concludes that, while they often dwell upon and magnify differences, such trans-Tasman cultural exchanges have yet to capture the similarities between the two countries.
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Who is singing the B-party Blues? National security and the communications industry
Susanne Lloyd-Jones
With the national security agenda here to stay, this article looks at the central yet contradictory role played in it by the communications industry. As well as the legislative framework, it canvasses issues and responses of telecommunications and internet providers, service engines, as well as those involved in journalism, broadcasting and content provision. The article argues that the communications industry is far from a neutral actor in the national security regime.
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Content delivered over convergence devices
Tim Dwyer
In April 2006, the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts released an important report on its Review of the Regulation of Content Delivered Over Convergent Devices. This article discusses the report and its findings, noting a number of critical questions it raises for the development of convergent audiences, content and distribution.
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Universal service in Australia: A mechanism worth keeping in an open telecommunications environment
Lucy Cameron
This article revisits universal service in Australian telecommunications, a much-contested topic — not least with the looming Telstra full privatisation and the availability of broadband and mobile technologies. It discusses the main types of universal service strategies advanced in the contemporary debate, and develops a new proposal in which local and regional governments would play a central role.
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Testimonial current affairs: The Australian Story approach to celebrity
Frances Bonner
Australian Story has developed a distinctive approach to both current affairs and the presentation of stories about celebrities. It has been subject to criticism for both of these, but the article argues that this is misguided, drawing on recent work on celebrity and particularly on John Langer’s analysis of the ‘other news’ to point out how pervasive ‘human interest’ style stories are throughout news bulletins and conventional current affairs, and noting how many of these concern celebrities. Calling on a large number of episodes, it demonstrates that the program is capable of acting to set news agendas and of continuing existing news coverage — both prime duties of current affairs programs — and that it uses its celebrity coverage in particular to perform these functions. It also identifies the role of the testimonial as central to what is special about the Australian Story approach.
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Bollywood and ‘grocery store’ video piracy in Australia
Adrian Mabbott Athique
This article seeks to examine the ongoing struggle between narrowcast media piracy practices serving migrant communities and the attempts currently being made by players in the Indian film industry to legitimate, and thus capitalise on, the circulation of Indian films in key offshore markets. This article poses the question of whether an alternative network of distribution is likely to emerge which might supplant Asian food stores as the primary distribution network for Indian films, and to place this problem within the existing framework of cultural practices surrounding Indian films in Australia.
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We too are green: Public relations, symbolic power and the Tasmanian wilderness conflict
Libby Lester
This paper asks how the incorporation of public relations and marketing strategies into political debate over Tasmanian wilderness, in particular the appropriation and deployment by industry and government of powerful symbols traditionally associated with the environment movement, challenges not only the always tenuously held power of the movement but also the power of the media. Drawing on textual analysis and interviews with journalists, activists and government and industry public relations specialists, it places recent developments into an historical context and is thus able to identify the nature and impacts of this ‘turn’ in the 30-year conflict. Specifically, it examines three key carriers of meaning for the environment movement — words, images and protest — and considers how their symbolic power can be harnessed by ‘authorities’ against both their traditional sponsors, the challenger groups, and their carriers, the news media.
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After image: Deadly Earnest and the ghosts of television’s past
Stephen Atkinson
In the 1960s and 1970s, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide each had their own Deadly Earnest, ghoulish presenter of Aweful Movies withDeadly Earnest, a weekly offering of schlock and B-grade horror. In Adelaide, on SAS 10, the persona of Deadly was assumed by local actor and photographer Hedley Cullen, whose maniacal laugh and pop-out eyes have remained indelibly etched in the memories of those who watched as children. Although the show was never intended for them, it was children who became his most ardent fans, inundating him with letters, drawings and miscellany, and mobbing him for autographs at suburban shopping centres and drive-ins. This paper discusses Deadly Earnest under Hedley Cullen’s stewardship as a feature of the lost world of pre-network regional television and local celebrity.
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The production of a television event: When Gunston met Gough at Parliament House
Wendy Davis
This paper considers 1970s television character Norman Gunston’s coverage of the dismissal of Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975. The paper explores the power of television comedy to intervene in the construction of a political event and transform it into a joke. Specifically, the paper describes how Gunston’s comic practice of carnival mobilises resistance to the usual view of the Whitlam dismissal. The paper also considers television’s capacity to transform a political episode into a television event resonating with the technology’s cultural force. In particular, the paper considers Deleuze’s proposition of the connection between television and cultural operations of control (1995a). Exploring Deleuze’s suggestion, the paper proposes that the Gunston–Whitlam television event demonstrates television’s potential to produce a mode of resistance to control — a point about which Deleuze is not particularly optimistic (1995a: 76; 1995b: 175). With this critical perspective on Gunston’s intrusion into an Australian political crisis, the paper provides an explanation of the way television comedy can transform and shape our understanding of such an event.
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Television satire, democracy and the decay of public language: John Clarke’s verbal caricature
Amanda Roe
This paper examines the contributions of John Clarke to the field of political satire through his interviews with straight-man Bryan Dawe on ABC TV’s The 7.30 Report. Clarke’s work represents one of the last vestiges of what was once a vigorous satiric tradition in TV comedy, specifically the practice of political caricature. There was The Mavis Bramston Show in the 1960s and The Naked Vicar Show in the 1970s, while The Gillies Report in the 1980s was probably the best example of sustained political caricature in television comedy. Even in later sketch-based shows such as Fast Forward and The Late Show in the early 1990s, political caricature was a significant component of the material, whereas it seems to have all but disappeared from current television comedy. The paper investigates the disappearance of this type of comedy from Australian television screens and also discusses why the longevity, consistency, not to mention accuracy, of Clarke’s satire is so important in the current political climate. Clarke’s political caricature is almost entirely language-based, expertly parodying the spin-doctored rhetoric of our elected representatives and business leaders. This leads to a secondary focus of the paper, which is a discussion of Clarke’s unique form of satire in the context of what an historian (and former satirist) identifies as ‘the decay of public language’.
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Changing the face of advertising: Australia’s advertising industry in the early days of television
Robert Crawford
Long before Australia’s first commercial television broadcasts in 1956, advertising agencies and advertisers had been preparing themselves for what they believed would be the greatest ever selling medium. The creation of a new outlet for advertisements was not the industry’s sole cause of excitement. Having dominated commercial radio, the advertising industry looked forward to extending its influence. These dreams, however, were only partially fulfilled. While television enabled the industry to broadcast its commercial messages in a more effective way, legislation prevented it from controlling television in the way that it had with radio. This would have a significant impact on the relationship between the two industries. By examining television’s impact on the advertising industry, this paper demonstrates that the medium of TV not only altered the face of advertising; it also caused a fundamental change in the structure and operation of Australia’s advertising industry.
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‘The weaker sisters’: The first decade of ATV-0 Melbourne and TEN-10 Sydney, 1964–1975
Nick Herd
This paper presents aspects of an historical analysis of commercial television as a cultural industry by reference to the introduction of the third licences in Sydney and Melbourne. I am looking at the period between 1964 and 1972 and the development of ATV-0 and TEN-10. In the first part of the paper, I examine some aspects of the industry and organizational structures of the time. Since programming flow is the structuring logic of television as a cultural industry, the second part of the paper looks at the programming strategies used by the stations to differentiate them from and allow them to compete with the other commercial stations. I will do this with reference to particular Australian programs scheduled by the stations. My argument is that, for most of the 1960s and into the early 1970s, these stations pursued an essentially defensive strategy attempting to change the station’s competitive position within the existing rules. The change to a more offensive strategy with the genesis of Number 96 was what laid the foundation for financial success.
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Down the tube: Religion on Australian commercial television
Peter Horsfield
Since 9/11, the question of the place of religion in the public sphere has re-entered public consciousness in Australia, most recently in links drawn between religion and terrorism, debates about free speech and religious vilification, and discussions about religion and the national character. This paper sets a background to these contemporary issues by examining some of the influential factors and personalities in the changing legislation about the mandatory broadcast of religion on Australian commercial television, from its earliest influences through some of the key contests in its subsequent developments. A range of ambiguities and ambivalences is identified, arising primarily from the dual nature of broadcast licences as commercial enterprises and community service, and the contested place of religion in Australian society. These include questions about the constitutionality of the government mandating the broadcast of religion; contests over what is and isn’t religion and who has authority to determine this distinction; conflicts arising from the competing interests of stations, churches and the government in the implementation of the legislation; difficulties in defining the purpose of mandatory broadcast of religious content as the place of religion in Australian society has changed; and resistance on the part of government agencies to acting to resolve those ambiguities in such a contested and contentious domain.
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Reporting Australian television news: Professional practice in the analogue-to-digital transition
Barbara Alysen
In the 50 years of Australian television, the one constant in the nightly schedule has been the news. The story of television news is usually told from the perspective of the news consumer. Even when the set of professional practices that produce news is analysed, the frame used is usually that from in front of the box rather than behind the camera and microphone. The result is that the process of reporting and the way it has changed over time has been given less attention than it deserves. Now, as the medium continues the transition from analogue to digital, Australian television news reporting is undergoing a series of shifts — in its methods of delivery and the tasks that reporters perform. These changes affect the nature of journalistic practice, which in turn bears on the product audiences receive.
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TV memories, The Daily Telegraph and TCN: ‘First in Australia’
Susan Bye
The public conversation about the fiftieth anniversary of Australian television in the media and on TV has reinvigorated the nostalgia of popular memory, but has also highlighted its institutionally inflected construction. In this paper, I conceive of Australian viewing history as a series of purpose-built narratives. My interest is in the public stories that define the experience of watching television and the nature of the invitation offered to viewers. Accordingly, in my extended examination of The Daily Telegraph archive, I reconstruct a narrative in which the paper’s Sydney readers are encouraged, initially, to imagine themselves as pioneers in Australian TV history and, a few months later, to become a part of the local TV community. Within the lively tabloid format of the Telegraph, television becomes the centre of a critical discourse about its duty to entertain that focuses on issues of both community and national identity.
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The international face of Australian television
Albert Moran
Australian television has always been part of an international cultural system. Programming, personnel, material resources, ideas and knowledge are among the elements that, historically, have moved between an audiovisual space, both here and elsewhere. Media executive Reg Grundy has been an important figure in this system. Over nearly 40 years, he built a television empire of considerable international significance. After sketching out this career, the article proceeds to outlines three moments in his company’s development. The first occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s when it imported and remade many successful television game shows from the United States. A second occasion occurred in the mid-1970s when Reg Grundy Enterprises imported a small team from the United Kingdom who were highly experienced in the production of daily drama serials. The third moment happened in the very early 1990s, when Grundy World Wide began adapting drama serials that it had originally devised and produced in Australia to be remade elsewhere. These three occasions were important points where the national met the international. Collectively, they highlight not only the outwardlooking dimension of Australian television, but the need for home-based media historians to make such a perception central to their investigations of a pre ‘media globalisation’ past.
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Australian TV 50 years on
Ted Thomas
This article reviews the 50 years of television in Australia from the point of view of a leading industry player. It describes the many challenges faced by the industry from its formative years to current media upheavals. Issues covered include regional television, the introduction of colour and satellite technology, the role of regulation, Australian content, children’s TV and the relation of Australian television to the rest of the world. It also looks at some of the programming highlights of the period.
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REVIEWS
Edited by Kitty van Vuuren and Angi Buettner
Balfour, Michael (ed.), Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice
Barclay, Barry, Mana Tuturu: Maori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights
Benwell, Bethan and Stokoe, Elizabeth, Discourse and Identity
Binnie, Jon, Holloway, Julian, Millington, Steve and Young, Craig (eds), Cosmopolitan Urbanism
Bruns, Axel, Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production
Couldry, Nick, Listening Beyond the Echoes: Media, Ethics, and Agency in an Uncertain World
Cubitt, Sean, The Cinema Effect
Huq, Rupa, Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial World
Lievrouw, Leah and Livingstone, Sonia (eds), The Handbook of New Media (student edn)
Lewis, Glen, Virtual Thailand: The Media and Cultural Politics in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore
Manne, Robert (ed.), Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia?
McKnight, David, Beyond Left and Right: New Politics and the Culture Wars
McNaughton, Howard and Newton, John (eds), Figuring the Pacific: Aotearoa and Pacific Cultural Studies
Pertierra, Raul (ed.), Transforming Technologies: Altered Selves
Reinard, John, Communication Research Statistics
Rothenbuhler, Eric and Coman, Mihau (eds), Media Anthropology
Ruoff, Jeffrey (ed.), Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel
Smith, Maquard, Stelarc the Monograph
Stockwell, Stephen, Political Campaign Strategy
Wilcox, Rhonda, Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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